


A Lesson in Truth

by Minorobsessions



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Kinda, M/M, One Shot, Pining, idk this wasn't supposed to be sad and then it turned sad, it's about the mlm wlw solidarity of pining over your friends who like each other, it's like...pre-relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21982477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minorobsessions/pseuds/Minorobsessions
Summary: Caduceus learns what it means to be jealous. Beau is already intimately familiar with the feeling.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 4
Kudos: 203





	A Lesson in Truth

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a combined 2 hours, and it's SO not my best work...but hey! No one was gonna write me pining jealous Caduceus so I had to do it myself! I might expand this but for now it ends here.

He’s sat at the end of the little local dive, swirling a finger in his (now stealthily purified) beer; Beau always insists on purchasing it for him. If he were to be honest, Caduceus might just admit to his friends that he’d rather not join their tavern-of-the-week pub crawls...but that would be impolite and really what’s one inconvenience a week in exchange for making his friends happy?

He’d settled in for his usual routine of people watching. Attempting, and failing, to memorize Xorhasian etiquette, observing his friends as they drink themselves into dopey stupors -- excluding Jester who plays along soberly, but just as chaotically.

Smiling jovially as he catches Caleb’s glassy gaze, he feigns another sip of his drink. Even purified, the lukewarm liquid tastes worse than death, he would know. His death drinks taste pretty good. Distracted by the dim room’s stimuli and his own streaming thoughts, the sudden pressure on his shoulder shocks him enough to flinch

“Whoa there big guy!” Came a warm, slightly slurred drawl. Caduceus lifts his gaze to meet familiar yellow eyes, and his smile widens as a flushed and grinning Fjord takes the stool next to him.

“Fjord. You surprised me, I apologize.”

“I _a-po-lo-gize_ ” mocks Fjord, his accent elongating and liquidating every vowel. “You’re always so formal.”

“I a-” Caduceus begins but stops himself with a sheepish smile, pushing a pink lock out of his suddenly hot face. Perhaps he had accidentally downed some alcohol after all.

“You looked so lonely over here, don’t you wanna join us?” Fjord askes, nodding toward where Nott is currently taking a shot off Beau’s stomach; judging by the shining wet ground and broken glass at her feet, it isn’t going very well.

“Lonely?” Caduceus ponders the notion. “No. I just like to watch people. See...what they’re about. I suppose.”

Fjord hums in response, and taps his fingers against his glass, filed claws clinking hypnotically.

“Deuces?” Caduceus blinks. He snaps his gaze away from Fjord’s fingers, and stares emptily back at him.

“I asked if you had any idea what I was about.” Fjord says, smirking. “Assuming of course I’ve been on your watch list.”

“Yes.” Caduceus answers. “And no.”

Fjord lifts an eyebrow in confusion as he downs the rest of his drink.

“I mean. I’ve watched you, yes. But you wear a mask, Fjord. Which- I mean. I don’t think is a bad thing entirely, I like you very much. You’ve crafted this person you wear with obvious care, but I think you’ve forgotten how to take them off.” Caduceus’s eyes widen with regret as he notices the apples of Fjord’s cheeks darken.

“Oh I didn’t mean to offend you!” Caduceus hastily adds. “You asked me what I saw, I apolo-”

“It’s okay!” Fjord interrupts. “You’re right. I asked.” He clears his throat and flashes a plastic smile. Suddenly the tinny atmospheric music ends and a heavier beat picks up. Fjord stands up jerkily and gestures over his shoulder. “Now this is a song I can move to.”

Fleetingly he turns back to Caduceus, “Care to... join me...?” he asks in a tone that implies he does not in fact want the other man to join him. To his confusion Caduceus feels his ears droop and a pang of regret beats through his heart. Odd, considering he has really does have no desire to dance, not to mention even less of an idea what to do once he’d foreseeably get there.

“Oh...That’s okay.” He answers slowly, looking down into his still full glass.

When he looks up a moment later he sees Fjord leading Jester toward the livening dance floor. Jester throws her head back in a confident laugh as she takes one of Fjord’s hands and spins herself under it. Fjord sways his hips languidly and un-self-consciously. His lips curl into a playful smile, though it doesn’t reach his eyes, and when they dart back over to the bar Caduceus quickly drops his gaze.

Suddenly his ribs seem to tighten around his lungs, his face burns and something coils in his stomach like a cat about to pounce. It’s uncomfortable and confusing and offensive on the senses. All at once nothing matters more than breathing in some fresh air, so Caduceus clumsily pushes off his stool (barely managing to save his glass from clattering onto the floor), and stumbles through the crowded room. Belatedly he hears someone call after him, but in his haze he can’t be bothered to figure out who it came from, let alone form any sort of coherent response.

\------

He assumes the nearing footsteps will simply pass by him, but as they come to a jerky stop, Caduceus cracks an eye open. His heaving breath and swimming head have calmed enough at this point to take in a confused but determined Beau leaning a shoulder against the back alley wall he’d pulled himself over to.

“Dude, are you okay?” Beau asks, eyeing him over incredulously. She’s wearing that do _I have to fuck someone up?_ expression and Caduceus’s eyes widen in alarm when she leans in and says, “Did Fjord say something to you?”

“What? No- no! If anything, _I_ was the one was the one who offended _him_.” Beau scoffs.

“Please. Cad. I don’t think I’ve heard you say one controversial thing in the time I’ve known you. What? Did you insult his taste in perennial flowers? And it should be known that I do blame you for the fact that I now know what perennial means.”

Caduceus is really still too muddled to rise to her bait, but he appreciates her effort. “I don’t know.” He says dejectedly. “Maybe I said something he wasn’t ready to hear. Something he doesn’t want to accept.” He really does feel guilty. Before meeting the Nein, honesty was something he valued above all else. It’s not that he doesn’t still believe in it, it’s just, he’s beginning to realize that perhaps there are competing truths and sometimes, when one has people worth loving, you have to find the truth that benefits them most, rather than the one most easily grasped.

Beau makes a sound of question that brings him back out of his head, but Caduceus cuts her off. “It doesn’t matter anyway, that’s not why I left. Perhaps something I ate wasn’t right, I don’t know. My chest just feels...weird. Heavy.”

Beau peeks her head into one of the tavern’s windows and collapses against the wall next to him, her shoulder presses snuggly against his forcep. It’s nice. Grounding.

“I feel you, man,” She sighs under her breath as she digs the palm of her hand into her sternum. Caduceus can’t quite tell if she meant for him to hear it, but he decides it would be ruder not to respond.

“How do you mean?” He asks and she laughs bitterly. She throws her hand up, knocking her knuckles into the window pane above her head.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t mind dancing either.”

“Not with Fjord.” Caduceus says, and he knows he’s right but for some reason this makes his throat tighten again.

At this Beau barks out a genuine laugh, and Caduceus nods in understanding. Jester then. He’d thought he’d known for a while, but his talent for reading people was eclipsed by his lack of any sort of relationship experience. Wait. He turns to Beau, befuddled.

“And...And this makes your chest heavy?”

Beau gives him a sad sort of stare under half-closed lids. “It makes my chest heavy, it makes my stomach twist. I feel like I’m holding my breath if I try to ignore it for too long, and eventually when I break and talk to her my cheeks ache from trying not to smile so wide that my mouth cracks my face in half. It’s pathetic.” She sighs and closes her eyes again, the cold framing her breathe like a puff of dragon’s smoke.

“No.” Caduceus says. To himself or her, neither of them are sure. It’s just, that can’t be right. He’s been coming down with something. These symptoms, they’re common they’re-

“What do you mean, No?” Beau scoffs.

“It’s not the same,” Caduceus answers, sounding petulant even to himself.

“Caduceus…” Beau says slowly, carefully, as if approaching an animal; but Caduceus isn’t listening.

This isn’t fair. Fjord doesn’t need this. He has so much growing to do, he could be so much more-- not...not that he needs to change, not that Caduceus doesn’t think the world of him. But he can feel it every time Fjord visits the roof. Every time his eyes trace the tree’s swirling bark and graceful branches. There’s some truth aching within him, and Caduceus can feel how his own bones seem to expand each time he gets a whiff of Fjord’s potential. It’s like his body needs to create any opening possible, any doorway through which Fjord may enter, any lock behind which Caduceus can protect him.

Every time he picks a flower, every time the sun reflects off his golden eyes, Caduceus knows. Caduceus knows it’s his duty. It’s his mission, to spread her will, her vision. The warmth he feels, it’s affirmation, it’s an omen, it--

“It isn’t supposed to be for me. I- I’m not in the business of keeping things, o-or...people. For myself.”

For a moment it looks like Beau is going to argue, but she pauses, instead deciding to gently take his wrist from where it’s tugging on a loose strand of hair.

“I’m sorry Caduceus.” She says, holding his hand for one second too long to be accidental. Her voice cracks as she says it again. “I’m sorry.”


End file.
